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New WordPress For Joomla Extension Version 2.7.1. Is it Worth The Upgrade?

A little while ago I did a review of the WordPress for Joomla extension that gave you new and almost infinite possibilities with Joomla that you didn’t have before. Now ‘corePHP’ has released and updated version of WordPress for Joomla in the flavor of WordPress 2.7.1 and as good as the original version was, this new version is that much better. The new version of WordPress for Joomla extension now includes permalink capabilities, four sidebars, the WP-Cumulus plugin and a few more useful plugins that will allow readers to share your posts with many social media websites.

First though let’s start with the easy installation and configuration of this extension. ‘corePHP’ has two different versions of the .zip file for download. The reason is that WordPress for Joomla extension is a fairly large file size and some servers may time-out when trying to install since it will take longer than 30 seconds which is the usual default server setting for uploading PHP files. So the second option is to install part of the extension through the Joomla installer and upload the rest of the files through FTP, either way the installation is very easy and fast.

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For those of you who may never have seen the Joomla admin panel the screenshot on the left shows the Joomla installer and the process of which you would install any Joomla extension including the WordPress for Joomla extension. I must say that Raphael Corral, the developer at ‘corePHP’ who is responsible for this extension, did an incredible job with this extension. I can’t think of anything else on the market that even comes close to what WordPress for Joomla does for Content Management Systems and Internet publishing platforms. To try to put it into perspective, this would be like taking Mac’s OS X and re-writing it and building it into Windows Vista so that they become one (Please don’t bombard me with VMware comments because that’s not what I mean). That would be an incredibly powerful operating system that would have unlimited potential. Well the WordPress for Joomla extension in essence does that with Joomla and WordPress.

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The screenshot on the left is a screenshot of the WordPress for Joomla extension. As you can see it looks exactly like a standalone version of WordPress and if you were blindfolded and put in front of a keyboard and screen you would never know that you were in fact working with the extension and not WordPress. You might ask at this point, “Why would I use this extension if I could use WordPress and get the same result?”. Well the thing is that you could now build your site any way that you want. There are many people who now attempt to use WordPress as a Content Management System with mixed results. So lets say that you have a product or service that you want to promote or sell but at the same time you want to have the ability to have a blog because you want to be able to add posts on a regular basis to attract readers and give more value and enhance your site and your products. A static website invariably is a lot harder to promote and get good Google rankings than a site with regularly added content that changes on a regular basis. Google does give points for sites that add content on a regular basis, not to mention the benefits that you would gain by showing your authority on the product or service that you would like to sell. Now on the flip side of that if you wanted a blog, you can now build a blog like no other. Joomla has a built-in blogger-API plugin that when activated will allow you to submit your Joomla built blog to various blog lists including Technorati and DMOZ (The open directory project) and it will be “seen” as a blog.

Getting back to the extension, it really is a breeze to work with. Whether you have ever used WordPress or not it’s the easiest publishing platform to work with. All you do is click on the left side menu selection for “Add new post”, write it and click on publish and your done. It really is that easy, of course you have the ability to add mages or other media and you can format the text pretty much any way that you would like.

Currently these are the plugins available for the WordPress for Joomla extension:

  • Akismet
  • All-In-One SEO Pack
  • GD Star Rating
  • Lightbox 2
  • Report Comments
  • Sermon Browser
  • ShareThis
  • Sociable
  • Subscribe To Comments
  • Subscribe 2
  • TineyMCE Advanced Text Editor
  • Wikipedia Autolink
  • WP Cumulus
  • WordPress.com Stats

While the list may not be extensive these are some core plugins that the vast majority of WordPress users use on their blogs. I also know first hand that many more plugins are being worked on by ‘corePHP’ and of course the community should start contributing to the efforts shortly. Generally speaking the plugins have to be coded to work correctly with this extension, however there are some plugins that will work without changing a line of code. Nextgen Gallery for example works fine in it’s original state. So you do have to try if there is a certain plugin that you like to use. If however it does not work you can always ask the team to make a specific plugin available. On the ‘corePHP’ site there is a section for customers to add their requests and ideas.

All of the same upgrades that were made to WordPress 2.7.1 (Stand alone version) are also part of this extension and the full compliment of WordPress feature are available in this extension:

  • Natively works on Joomla! 1.5, install it as any other extension
  • Dynamic Pages
  • Pages –Allows you to manage non-bloggable content, such as an About page
  • WordPress Links –  (Blogroll).
  • WordPress Themes – There are thousands of themes out on the web ready to be used with WordPress. ‘corePHP’ also offers the ability to make you a custom theme to match your website. Note: Most themes will need some edits to work inside of Joomla!
  • Cross-blog communication tools – WordPress fully supports both the Trackback and Pingback
  • Comments – Visitors can leave comments on individual posts and through Trackbacks and Pingbacks.
  • Spam protection —WordPress comes with very robu
    st tools such as an integrated blackli
    st and open proxy checker to manage and eliminate comment spam on your blog.
  • Full Joomla! 1.5 user integration – WordPress will sync the WordPress user every time he loads the component to make sure all of the users information is accurate. All of WordPress roles are fully functional within Joomla! 1.5
  • Password Protected Posts – Give individual posts a password to hide them from the public.
  • Easy Installation and upgrades – Every time a new update comes out just uninstall it from Joomla’s administrator panel, and install the new version, your database, media, plug-ins and themes will still be there.
  • XML-RPC interface – WordPress currently supports an extended version of the Blogger API, MetaWeblog API, and finally the MovableType API.
  • User Roles – You can have different user types, users that can only post drafts, but cannot publish them.
  • ASCII to correct XHTML – WordPress will transform pain ASCII into correct XHTML entities.
  • Ping away – WordPress supports pinging Ping-O-Matic, which means maximum exposure for your blog to search engines.
  • iPhone – Joomla! supports the iPhone app for WordPress. This app allows you to create, publish, draft, and password protect your posts. It takes pictures and much more in the upcoming releases.
  • Post via Email – If you don’t have an iPhone, you can send an email to a predefined email address and WordPress will automatically post it to your blog.

‘corePHP’ has added a few features of our own:

  • Add / Remove blog title
  • Add / Remove sidebar
  • Different options for CSS style sheets
  • Enable / Disable automatic role syncing with Joomla!
  • Show / Hide Author name in posts.

You have to admit this is an impressive list of features for any product but to now have the ability to join Joomla and WordPress into one platform is a feather in ‘corePHP’s cap. I for one am one of their biggest fans and I’m also looking forward to testing out the new ‘corePHP’ WordPress-MU for Joomla extension. Yes that’s right they now release WordPress-MU and that just opens up all new doors and possibilities and I’ll be publishing my findings shortly. In the meantime have fun with this incredible plugin and start imagining the things that you could create with this extension and Joomla.